


The Other Girl

by rememberwhenyoutried



Series: Let There Be Light [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Trans, Dysphoria, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Trans Female Character, Transgender, Transstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:22:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rememberwhenyoutried/pseuds/rememberwhenyoutried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suddenly, everything hurts.</p><p>A one-shot story following <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/999745/chapters/1979475">An Earth-Shattering Confession</a>. Rose has a moment of self-hatred.</p><p>Warning for trans readers: this might be a bit triggering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Girl

It had been a fairly ordinary afternoon. You’d been studying in the living room, laptop on the table and books scattered across the couch. Since you came out you’ve begun to repair your strained relationship with your mother, and you’ve been spending more time together as a result, quietly and amicably sharing the same space and at last acting like two people who live together, instead of two people who happen to share a front door and a kitchen. 

Coming out to your friends had gone well. Granted, you’d spent much of the evening engaged in personal revelations mostly related to the softness of Kanaya’s lips and the way her back tenses when she kisses but once you’d disentangled from each other you played host to a few more groups of slightly bashful trolls, under the watchful eyes of either Karkat or Dave and Terezi—who had managed to become a couple in record time, or so it seemed to you. They were almost all perfectly pleasant, with some surprises: Eridan, who you found out later had been mulling the idea of blackflirting with you, had come by to see you on his own towards the end of the night and offered his services as, “an avengin angel, should any one a these low class fuckers disrespect you.” Kanaya suggested that, disabused of the notion that humans had or even understood kismesis, he was trying out for your pale quadrant. You still weren’t entirely sure what that meant, but if the earnest sea troll wanted to be your friend you decided you’d give him a chance, despite Kanaya’s glowering dismissal of him.

Since that day you’d felt a little strange. Disconnected, purposeless. The next big job was finding a doctor willing to prescribe HRT, which was probably going to mean either a bit of a wait, therapy sessions, or a trip to the city and the informed consent clinic. You’d also been toying with the idea of self-medding: ordering your pills online or even seeing if hormone tablets were something your mom could make with the intimidating agglomeration of equipment in her lab. But, waiting to take that next step, you’d been feeling adrift.

And then the television, quietly murmuring away in the corner of the room, ignored by both you and your mother, switches to an innocuous commercial for fabric softener featuring a couple of pre-teen girls playing in someone’s back garden, and you’re caught in its gaze. Suddenly, everything hurts.

#

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA]  
  
TG: kanaya  
TG: i need you  
TG: are you there  
TG: dammit  
TG: its rosie  
TG: shes scaring me  
GA: Im Here  
GA: Please Tell Me What Is Going On  
TG: i dont know  
TG: she just froze up  
TG: gathered herself into a little ball on the couch  
TG: shes just staring straight ahead  
TG: oh god kanaya  
TG: her nails are digging into her arms  
TG: shes making herself bleed  
GA: Have You Tried Talking To Her  
TG: she doesnt respond  
TG: shes so quiet  
TG: please come  
TG: and dont give me any of that matesprit not moirail crap  
TG: its you she needs  
TG: i dont care about yr quadrants  
GA: I Wasnt Even Going To Mention It  
GA: Human Troll Relationships Cannot Be Subject To The Same Rules As Troll Troll Relationships  
GA: Or Human Human For That Matter  
GA: We Are Our Own Thing  
GA: We Havent Worked Out What It Is Yet  
TG: ok thats great  
TG: just  
TG: please stop talkin to me now and get in a car  
GA: I Am In A Car  
GA: My Ancestor Is Driving Me  
TG: oh god ok  
TG: thank her for me pls  
GA: You Can Thank Her Yourself  
GA: By Preparing A Case Of Cerulean Blood  
TG: oh crap 2 trollpires in the house  
TG: and heres me in my shitty day clothes  
GA: Oh No She Is Not A Rainbow Drinker  
GA: She Just Wants It To Intimidate A Friend  
TG: wait what  
GA: Please Tell Rose I Am Coming  
TG: i will  
  
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering grimAuxiliatrix [GA]  
  
GA: That Was A Joke By The Way She Is Also A Rainbow Drinker  
GA: Oh  
GA: Perhaps That Was Not The Best Time

#

You can almost see it, the life you could have had. The girl you could always have been. She had friends growing up and she didn’t feel inexplicably alienated; she had longer hair, maybe, which fell into her eyes a little unless she used a hair band; she was on top of her schoolwork and never spent sleepless nights in tears she couldn’t explain. She can only be a fantasy and perhaps a goal, but right now you envy her so powerfully it hurts.

You can’t help but look back on every event you can remember, every failure and every wound, and wonder what she would have done. You feel insulted by your failed perspective, by the way you find it so hard to picture what someone unbroken could be capable of.

She’s spent her whole life flying. You’ve only just started to build your own wings, and they will never be as perfect as the ones she was given.

You hate her. Given everything. Oblivious.

Your fingernails are cutting into the skin of your upper arms. You can almost feel them and you resent the wounds even as you inflict them: little artifacts of that time you flipped out over a fucking commercial because it showed you a window into a life you never knew you needed.

How could you be so stupid? How could you be so _slow?_ You daren’t look away from the wall because you might see yourself, see your hands and your arms and see all the ways your stupidity has damaged you. If you’d only realized earlier, five years ago, ten years ago, things could have been different, _you could have been that girl_.

You’re finding it hard to think. There’s a void building in your heart and in your head, a singularity that feels like it could take you in, swallow you, crush you,

so why don’t you

let it.

Why don’t you just

fall

in.

 

 

You become aware, slowly, painfully, of hands on your shoulders, an arm around your back, and a voice.

“Rose. Rose, it’s me. I want you to come back to me, Rose. Wherever you are, whatever has taken you, you can come back to me. Come back.”

You can feel warmth around you.

“Take all the time you need,” the voice is saying, “but come back to me. I will be here, with you, however long it takes.”

Rhythmic rubbing on your shoulders and your back. A kiss on your forehead.

A whisper in your ear: “It’s me, Rose. It’s Kanaya. I know things have been hard, I know everything feels painful and unfair and far too difficult. But I know something else as well.

“You are not alone. Not any more. You don’t have to suffer alone, you don’t have to cry alone, and you don’t have to cope alone. You can always turn to me. Always reach for my hand. And when you get lost I’ll be here, waiting, and you can follow my voice back home.”

You focus. Focus on her voice, focus on her hands, focus on her.

This regret, this hate, this envy, none of it is really you. You remember when you found yourself and it was like opening your eyes for the first time; so why are you closing them again?

Why are you retreating?

That other Rose, the fantasy with the perfect life, she can take care of herself. Maybe you won’t ever fly as high as her, but maybe you _will_ , and if you have to build your own wings you can make them the strongest and most beautiful wings anyone’s ever seen. You can be just as good as her, you can be _better_...

“I’m here, Rose,” Kanaya’s saying, and you find yourself able to focus properly on her voice. “You can come back to me. I’m right here. I’m—”

She’s interrupted when you release your arms and legs and almost lunge at her, your arms finding her waist and squeezing her as tightly as you can. She guides your head to her shoulder and suddenly with a massive release of tension you start to cry, right there, in her arms.

“Shhh,” she says softly. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise you’re going to be okay.”

You believe her.

#

Half an hour later, cried out, dehydrated, exhausted, you’re half-sitting and half-lying on the couch, head against Kanaya’s shoulder, empty.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Kanaya says, “what happened?”

“It’s so silly, when I think about it,” you say. “I saw a commercial on TV, a couple of little girls playing, and then all I could think about was how unfair it was that that’d never been me. I imagined another Rose, beautiful and strong and everything I sometimes doubt I can ever be, and I got so _angry_ at her for having everything. And then I got angry at myself, for not realizing sooner, for robbing myself of the chance to be her, and... I don’t know. It all got to be too much. I switched off. I feel on the verge of doing so again.”

“Rose,” Kanaya says. She’s stroking your hair with her free hand and you concentrate on the way it feels. “I don’t think you should be so angry with yourself.”

“But...” you start, but she pats you into silence.

“I think you should be proud,” she says, and she puts a knuckle under your chin and brings your head up to face her. “You should be very proud. You realized something about yourself, something I’m only just coming to see is not exactly encouraged in this world, and you went and gathered information, found a friend to help you, told me, told your mother, told _everyone_ , and now you’re on the road to getting the treatment you need.

“What you didn’t do five years ago doesn’t matter now, because you didn’t _know_ five years ago. What matters is that you are changing things, now. There is so much to be proud of in your life, today, and you did it all yourself.”

You’re not sure what to say in response but it kind of makes sense to you and you don’t want her to stop, so you wriggle your shoulders against hers and give her your first smile of the evening. It wobbles a bit.

“I suggest,” she says, “next time you feel that anger, that hatred, you remind yourself of every difficult thing you’ve done so far, all your hard work, and you try to be proud of yourself. Because there is much to be proud of, I promise you that.”

Your smile firms up a bit and you start to think that, hey, maybe she’s right: you lived through rather a lot last week, and when you actually look for it you really can see a future; and a future might be something Other Rose always took for granted, but it’s quite new to you, and it’s only happening because you made it happen.

“Hey, Kanaya,” you say. “Thank you. Thank you for coming over, thank you for talking to me, and thank you for knowing just what to say.”

You’re feeling suddenly not just exhausted but sleepy, and almost automatically you tuck your legs in a little and lower your head so that it’s resting on Kanaya’s leg instead of her shoulder.

“Thank you,” you say, “for being _you_.”

“It’s quite all right,” she says, and she lays a gentle hand on your forehead.

“I’m just going to lie here for a little while,” you mumble, “if that’s okay with you.”

She shooshes you, quietly, and you fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this is a little rough. I wrote it on my iPod when I should probably have been sleeping, and it hasn't been beta'd because my betas are also trans and I didn't want to be all, hey, here's this angstfic, read it now!


End file.
